Pen Tablet Support

From OLPC

The XO-1 comes equipped with a unique dual-mode pointing device. It functions both as a conventional trackpad (the capactive-sensitive "Glide Sensor") and as a graphics tablet (the pressure-sensitive "Pen Tablet"). This page documents how the PenTablet is supported by the OLPC system software.

NOTE: As of Build 656 (2008-01-17), the system software does not contain built-in support for the PenTablet.

Contents

Sample Activities

The state of Pen Tablet support is currently in flux, but there are some sample applications created by Patrick Dubroy that will allow you play with the tablet. NB: These applications assume no tablet support in X, so they fork an external process (evtest) to read from the tablet.

Ideas for Activities using the tablet

Imagine writing a calculation down on paper and the paper magically working out the answers. We have built a calculator that works like this, which is ideal for pen based computers and interactive whiteboards in classrooms. It recognises your handwriting, and you write naturally, using ordinary mathematics notation you are already familiar with.

For OLPC Core Developers

User Interaction

It has not yet been decided how the user interaction with the PenTablet will work. The issues are discussed here: Pen Tablet UI.

Driver issues

In March 2007, Zephaniah E. Hull posted an informative description of the low-level driver details here.

The PenTablet driver has disabled for quite some time (as of March 2008) because: